Chapter Eighteen: Arrival

When Mai Mosa returned Lacy to the party about an hour and a half later she was surprised to have many recruits trying to ask her questions about the hunt—some of them very rude questions about whether she was Mai Mosa’s fling—but Instructor Poko shouted at them to continue marching with vigilance and that they could talk when camp was set up. So everyone’s questions burned in them for the rest of the day, except Shu and Hoomar, who were allowed to chat by virtue of friendship.

“It was…as frightening as being kidnapped by the koroths. Without the Guardian right next to me I would have died a hundred times before I killed even a single beast,” Lacy recounted to her friends and later the other recruits. “I haven’t gotten good enough at qi control to fight as a spirit cultivator.”

……

Several days later recruits gasped as thick forests gave way to cleared lands, revealing squat buildings and tents in the distance. The architecture was noticeably different from Yellowvine’s, more minimalist, boxy, and undecorated. After so long traveling by foot through hostile wilderness everyone was beyond relieved to see signs of civilization. Even the instructors released sighs through their noses.

Though no one was more excited than Peegra, apparently, who acted like he’d gained a second student as talented as Lacy.

For several suspenseful minutes the party walked through the cleared land in complete silence, the recruits seemingly worried that if they made too much noise that the oasis would flicker and fade into a mirage.

Lacy couldn’t say that she wasn’t also relieved, but being able to burn through souls to cease her ordinary bodily functions was more of a balm to her psyche than anything else possibly could be. She would accept guard training if it was in the middle of a desert so long as she could continue living blissfully free of pissing every few hours, shitting every day, sleeping every night, and bleeding every GODDAMN month.

But she was still quite happy to see their destination grow larger as they closed the distance.

“Welcome, citizens of Yellowvine!” a voice boomed just as a vast and dense aura—though not on the same realm as Mai Mosa’s—swept across their entire party. A man stepped off the roof of a building to meet them, completely fine after falling about a dozen meters because his descent was slowed by an updraft of wind.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he began with a polite bow. “My name is Autberry. I reside over this guard training camp on behalf of the capital as your Overseer. I have no affiliations except for my promise to the empire that I will be a just arbiter and teacher.”

While most of the party watched and listened respectfully, Lacy couldn’t help but to bounce on the balls of her feet at what she sensed in the middle-aged man’s aura.

“Additionally, I am a dual cultivator, so rest assured that I am qualified.”

……

Autberry, Mai Mosa, and the instructors exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before the party officially entered the training camp, the instructors showed them their new barracks for the next few months, and everyone scattered to explore. They had the day to relax, but most recruits were excited to see the place, which was funny to Lacy because they’d get to see it eventually anyway.

And frankly, she didn’t give much of a shit about anything except her spirit cultivator training. Partly because it was fun, but she was definitely influenced a lot by Mai Mosa’s hunting trips.

Zero. She had stood up against exactly zero spirit beasts. The weakest one Mai Mosa found for her to fight was a rodent of some kind the size of a medium dog. It had raced around her trying to escape the Guardian, barely caring of her presence, and it put her out of the fight by bouncing off her the back of her leg with enough force to make her eat dirt.

It was humiliating, but very eye-opening. Until she could train her qi control up to a certain point, she was defenseless, which did not feel good. She could neither cut enemies down, use the very ground to trip them, nor blast enemies with water. Yet!

Which was why she practiced RELIGIOUSLY. She had needed to hunt so often because she turned off her body’s need for regular functions and therefore allowed herself functionally twice the training time by making use of the hours she would normally sleep.

Peegra was an ever-excited teacher, because every night when he’d asked to see her progress, there was progress to show. After weeks of training, Lacy now had little difficulty at all controlling her aura and qi breathing, leaving her with just the manipulation of elements left.

Incidentally, she’d also secretly unlocked the abilities to sense fire, gold, and air qi but had refrained from practicing those—even in the dead of night, because there were always a few guards awake, and they could have sensed her.

“Ooh, I like this one!”

Shu led Lacy into a particularly circular barrack built for Yellowvine recruits, to which Lacy shrugged.

“Any will do, I just need a bed.”

Thankfully, the barrack had clean beds, which she immediately drowned herself in. Shu also laid down on Lacy’s bed for a few minutes before exclaiming that she’d had enough rest and wanted to check out the new men. Lacy waved her off and just relaxed.

After so many nights sitting and laying in shitty blankets on the rough ground, even her new low-quality bed was the equivalent of a cloud. She was going to thoroughly enjoy having a nice place to rest. But she didn’t let herself relax for too long before beginning to practice her water qi manipulation with the contents of her waterskin.

……

Hours later Lacy’s concentration was disrupted by shouts. She recognized the voices, which belonged to her fellow recruits. Having been practicing for a productive amount of time Lacy stepped out of her barrack to stretch her legs and be entertained by whatever drama was ensuing.

‘Oh, the wasps. Of course.’

Earlier Shu and Lacy had passed by a barrack with a large wasp nest on the building’s side, and it looked like the last few guys to claim a building were saddled with that one.

“I was stung at a young age and nearly died for it! I refuse to reside in this one!”

But none of these macho men—some of whom had talked shit about her and Shu during the preliminary seven days—were volunteering their cots, much less trying to get rid of the nest. In fact, a lot of guys were being downright mean about the situation, telling the unlucky three who were last to choose a building that it was their fault for spending so much time exploring the camp.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Which was partly true, Lacy admitted, but still…everyone here was training to become a respected guard of Yellowvine. As guards they would have to work very well together and keep hostilities almost nonexistence. It made no sense to her that they were acting like this.

So against Lacy’s every instinct, she stepped forward.

“I thought you all—”

Her entry into the conversation was noticed by everyone in an instant, and all eyes turned toward her, causing her to freeze. But a moment later she shook her head, set her teeth, and continued stomping forward. She was a spirit cultivator! All of these men were still mere mortals! She didn’t think she was particularly better than them for that, but at the very least they had every reason to respect her and she shouldn’t be afraid!

“I thought you all were here to become respected Yellowvine guards?” Lacy queried with a slight mocking tone. “If we’re all accepted, then we’ll have to work together for a long time. Why are you guys being so antagonistic to each other?”

She let the question linger so that they would defend themselves here instead of interrupt her later, but nobody spoke up. Though it looked like half the guys had bitten lemons.

“Especially to him!” Lacy said, pointing at the guy who seemed to have an insect bite allergy. “I’ve seen unlucky people like him die by just a handful of stings! You can’t blame him for how his body reacts to them!”

“Are you going to give him your cot, then? Take his place?” someone spoke up with a sneer.

Lacy whirled on them with a disapproving glare.

“No, I’m going to fix the problem. I’m not as big or strong as you guys, yet, but I have a brain! You could have put the wasps to sleep by burning something under their nest, then removed it. But I want to try something different.”

Most of the men gathered looked at her expectantly.

“Bring me all your waterskins. I’ll practice my spirit arts on them.”

To Lacy’s surprise, the men’s hunger for witnessing a spirit cultivator at work overcame their embarrassment at being talked down to by a woman. Soon almost everyone presented her with as much water as they could carry.

And the situation hit Lacy as she realized how mortifying it was going to be if she failed. Still, she pushed through her anxiety and got to work, putting her training into practice. Lacy faced the wasp nest from a few meters away, not really worried that some stray bugs would seek her out because they were just normal animals, not spirit beasts that could see her aura. They might still chase her for just being nearby, but she’d been stung before, so she didn’t fear the pain. Unfortunately, because they were just normal animals, her aura had no ability to suppress them, so if she couldn’t kill them with her arts, she had no back-up plan.

Lacy’s hands raised from her sides in soft, circular motions as her aura collected ambient qi for about a minute, which must have looked like she was stalling to the other recruits, but she tried not to be bothered by the dozens of eyes burning holes in her.

When she’d accumulated a sufficient quantity of ambient qi she asked that everyone open their waterskins, then she separated the energy into a dozen marble-sized spheres, which she slowly lowered into a dozen different skins at the same time.

Normally controlling twelve different workings of qi at the same time would have been way too much for her, but in this instance, they didn’t feel like different workings at all. She wasn’t moving all of them independently. She moved them all at once, in synchrony.

Gasps and sharp inhalations from noses erupted around Lacy as twelve marbles of water floated up and toward the wasp nest. Now, she wished she could grab a wasp in each at the same time, but that would be insanely difficulty, so she let eleven marbles rest still in the air while a single marble shot forward and wrapped around an unsuspecting wasp.

Cheers, hoots, and hollers sounded all around her, and it was hard not to blush. She’d made these men go from bickering roommates to excited football fans in minutes.

Just like that the problem was basically solved. Lacy captured several wasps in each marble before bringing them over to the men, who happily stomped the asshole insects beneath their boots. However, on the second drive-by-drowning a single wasp seemed to have figured out that the nearby humans were responsible for the kidnappings and flew at Lacy faster than she could react.

It landed on her arm and stung, causing shooting pain to erupt, destabilizing her concentration enough that she dropped three water marbles full of wasps.

“Someone, please,” she said through gritted teeth, and someone stepped up to smack the bug on her arm. “Thank you.”

Though the sting was annoying, it hardly changed the outcome of the spirit Seed’s massacre. Lacy managed to catch what felt like hundreds of wasps by the time one brave recruit just went up and punched the nest off the wall, which only released a few more flying assholes that were swiftly captured by waiting water marbles.

“That should be it,” Lacy said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Now if only I could do that to real spirit beasts.”

“I foresee exactly that happening, someday,” a voice said from above as sounds of surprise escaped the recruits. “That was an excellent use of your talents, Initiate. What is your name?”

Lacy stared wide-eyed at the dual cultivator Sprout atop the barrack for an embarrassingly long time before she said, “Mathews Lacy. Uh, please call me Lacy.”

“I take it that you, Initiate Lacy, are the reason for an Elite Seed’s presence in the party? Are you here just on curiosity of the guard training program, or…?”

“I want to be a dual cultivator, sir,” she said, fixing her posture and assuming parade rest.

“None of that now,” the older man said, floating down from the roof on a cushion of air qi to land next to her. “No need to stand at attention unless in official settings, which this is not.” With a flick of his wrist, air qi swirled around the fallen wasp hive and brought it to his side. “Now, how about we chat while I dispose of this?”

“Yes, sir!”

Lacy’s fellow recruits awkwardly went about their days as she followed the dual Sprout through the camp.

“Describe your background,” Autberry said, eyes forward and hands behind his back as the hive floated next to him.

“Um, I don’t know if you’ll believe it…”

“Nonsense, Initiate,” he replied encouragingly.

“Okay…sir. Well…um, I don’t have a background.”

He turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow but didn’t speak, seemingly waiting for her to continue.

“You see, I just woke up one day in a vegetable field with no memories of my past life, where I was found by a farm boy. His family generously took me in and tutored me for about a month, at which point I decided that although I’m extremely grateful to the farmers, I didn’t want to live their lifestyle. I’d heard about cultivators and wanted to become one, so with the help of a guard whose wife I befriended, I enlisted in the guard exams.”

Lacy paused in case Autberry had questions.

“Intriguing. How did you discover your spirit talents?”

She felt weird about skipping the koroths but she also felt that they created the biggest holes in her story. If this guy knew that koroths could sense spirit roots just as Sapling-realm humans could, there might be trouble.

“After an administrator investigated my story and found it to be true, he insisted on bringing me in front of Yellowvine’s Guardian in case I had a spirit root, despite his superiors telling him he was wasting time. So, one guy doing his job changed my life, I guess.”

Autberry chuckled.

“Yes, that is why we have duties: to change lives. You might have never been seen by a Sapling before you became a body Seed and died by the teeth of a spirit beast, so I would be quite grateful to that administrator.”

Lacy gulped.

“Yeah, maybe.”

In truth she’d already awakened as a spirit Seed, so all of that wouldn’t have happened, but just announcing that she’d awakened on her own without being told she could or how to do it would have been HELLA suspicious.

“You have quite the fascinating tale, Initiate Lacy.” Autberry said as they arrived at what looked like a cafeteria whose seating areas were all outside with no shelter from the weather. He led Lacy into the building through a side door where a cook hastily bowed.

“Uh, what can I do for you, Overseer?” he asked with a tremble in his voice, presumably because Autberry didn’t go to the kitchen often.

“I have a treat for Yellowvine’s recruits only,” he announced while the hive hovered in front of him. “Where would you like me to put this?”

The cook scrambled to make space for the large hive while the Overseer turned around and informed Lacy, “It was honey wasps you killed, thankfully. That leaves you delectable honey, alongside the wax, which I am of the opinion is nice to chew while bored. The eggs can be added to the meals.”

Lacy ignored the part about eating wasp eggs as she slowly asked, “Were…the wasps allowed to nest there on purpose?”

Autberry gave her a cheeky smile.

“Of course not.”